The rich moresque-work of the roof of gold
Aloft the Haram’s curtained galleries rise
Where through the silken net-work glancing eyes,
From time to time, like sudden gleams that glow
Through autumn clouds, shine on the pomp below.”
The gardens attached to the palaces we may well believe favorite
resorts of the queen and her attendant ladies. Shaded paths, sparkling
fountains, retired resting places and beds ablaze with flowers, all
these made a charming retreat. In the midst was usually a hall, kiosk
or arbor, raised on several steps, a fountain in the centre making a
musical murmur and spreading coolness around. It was enclosed with
gilded lattices over which rioted in careless grace vines of jassamine,
honeysuckle and other creepers—a fair green wall overhung and protected
by tall trees. Here, too, doubtless the king enjoyed some of his hours
of leisure, wrapped about with the perfume of violets and sipping a
sherbet of violets and sugar, a favorite drink in Persia. We learn
of a “Betel-carrier and Taster of Sherbets to the Emperor.” Lest
poison might secretly be prepared for the royal palate it was always
necessary to have a taster, the first victim in case of evil intent.
To this other duties were added such as “Chief Holder of the Girdle
of Beautiful Forms and Grand Nazir or Chamberlain of the Harem.”
King Canute sat on the brink of the ocean and ordered it to come no
further; King Darius or Xerxes laid a similar prohibition on the waxing
proportions of his spouse—neither perhaps was strictly obeyed by Dame
Nature. At least it appears to have been the duty of the “Holder of
the Girdle of Beautiful Forms” to do what he could—“Permit me, most
gracious Lady. Alas, one inch beyond the line of beauty!” Subsequently
perhaps starvation and tears to insure return to the stipulated measure.
Costly materials rather than shape were prized by the Persians, and
their ornaments were less ornate and elaborate than those of the
Egyptians; rings and bracelets were of plain gold, collars of twisted
gold, but comparatively unartificial. Their household utensils too seem
to have been few and simple in pattern, a covered dish and a goblet
with an inverted saucer over it are often pictured in the hands of the
royal attendants. Occasionally, but rarely, we hear of Persian women
indulging in manly sports, as Roxane, daughter of Idernes, and half
sister of Terituchmes was skilled in the use of the bow and the javelin.
The queen mother, when the widow of the late king, took precedence of
her daughter-in-law, the wife of the reigning monarch, had certain
privileges, peculiar to herself, was attended by a band of eunuchs and
dined with her son in the women’s apartment. Though not nominally in
public life her influence was often very great and at times used or
abused most cruelly.
As in the earlier times, certain cities in Egypt were assigned to
furnish the revenues of the queen, and that of Anthylla was appointed
to provide her with shoes. This must also, it would seem, have applied
to the females of her household, as a single pair of feet, even though
royal, could have been but a slight tax on the revenues of a town.
To return to the thread of history which we are following. King Apries
was overthrown and succeeded by Amasis, who, usurper though he was,
seems to have reigned long and well. The date given for the close of
the reign of Apries is B. C. 579, and Amasis ruled for forty-five
years; his son Psammetic III had been on the throne but a few months
when Cambyses conquered Egypt.
Syria appears to have been held by Egypt during the Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Dynasties, while later Egypt disputed its possession with
Assyria, and lastly the Ptolemies and Califs ruled it from Egypt.
But the Egypt of which we now make study was no longer a country
united under one head and going forth to conquer and demand tribute
from surrounding nations. She was alternately divided under the
sovereignty of a number of petty kings or ground under the heel of some
all-conquering but more or less temporary master. Wars and internal
dissentions were constant, with now and then a longer period of
comparative peace and tranquility, in which the country had breathing
space to recover from the desolation and ruin that had preceded it.
The Persians, numbered as the Twenty-seventh Dynasty, came in as
masters who desired rather to trample upon than conciliate their
subjects. They outraged the sensibilities and prejudices of the people,
and, it is said, that the arts, long in decline, received a severe
blow from their invasion, while many of the finest buildings in Egypt
were mutilated and destroyed by Cambyses, hence revolts against the
new authority were frequent. Cambyses himself appears to have acted
at times like a cruel madman, and whether the story of his stabbing
the revered Apis bull be true or not, and, like all old stories, its
authenticity is sometimes disputed, the incident is but an illustration
of the general course which he pursued.
He was son of Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, said to be the grandson
of the Median King Astyages, and his mother was said by Ctesias to be
Amytias and, by Herodotus, to be Cassandane or Kassomdane, daughter of
Pharnespes, a member of the royal family, who died before her husband.
Cambyses was in every way inferior to his father. The children of this
marriage were two sons and three daughters, the sons Cambyses and
Smerdis, the daughters Atossa, Roxana and Artystone.
Cyrus left his kingdom to his elder son, but placed so much power also
in the hands of the younger that Cambyses caused his brother to be
secretly murdered that his rights might be undisputed. Following the
Egyptian custom, or setting up a law for himself, since it does not
seem to have been the habit of the Persian monarchs, he married his two
sisters, Atossa and Roxana. The Persian judges said it was not lawful
for a man to marry his sister, but the king could of course do as he
pleased. The unfortunate Roxana excited the fury of this monster by
mourning for her brother Smerdis, and is said also to have been killed
by Cambyses with a kick. A Greek inscription at Behistan affirms that
Smerdis was murdered before Cambyses started for Egypt; that the latter
committed suicide in the end; that the rebellion was a religious one,
and that the Magian was not Smerdis but Gomates, and the discovery of
the imposture is not as generally given. Other authorities claim that
Smerdis was murdered by Cambyses’ orders during his absence, but the
affair seems much involved in mystery.
Cambyses adopted as his Horus name “Horus, the Unifier of Two Lands,”
and styled himself “Born of Ra.” For a third wife he took Nitetis,
daughter of the Previous Egyptian king, Apries, but sent to him as the
daughter of Amasis, the reigning monarch. Upon this deception, it is
asserted, hinged the invasion of Egypt. There seems to be a discrepancy
in dates, some holding that Nitetis would have been too old a bride
for Cambyses, and therefore it must have been Cyrus that took her to
wife, and that Cambyses was her son rather than her husband. But this
tale is believed to be of Egyptian origin, made up to remove from their
shoulders the stigma of being merely a conquered people and set up a
pretence that Cambyses had some legal right to the throne by descent
from an Egyptian princess.
Another tale is thus given by Herodotus. A Persian woman visited
the harem of King Cyrus, was struck with the beauty of the children
of Cassadane and praised them greatly to their mother. “Yet would
you believe it,” said Cassadane, “Cyrus neglects me, the mother of
such children as these, to pay honor to an Egyptian interloper!” On
this Cambyses, her eldest son, a boy of ten years of age, exclaimed:
“Therefore, mother, when I am a man, I will turn Egypt upside down!”
Which threat, if ever made by him, was most surely fulfilled.
Supposing Nitetis to have been the grand-daughter, rather than the
daughter of Apries, the dates become more intelligible. It is this
period of history that Ebers has selected for his romance of an
“Egyptian Princess,” which, like all his historical novels, if lacking
perhaps great vitality in the individual characters, has a carefully
studied and interesting ground work of historical fact. The truth or
the tradition, which ever it be, runs thus: Amassis, King of Egypt,
sent by request to the King of Persia, suffering with some trouble
of the eyes, his special oculist. The physician, resentful of long
ostracism from home and friends, suggested to his patron that he should
demand in marriage the daughter of the Egyptian king. The plan was
proposed not in good faith, but with a desire to make trouble.
Perhaps the reputation of Cambyses was already evil and well known.
At any rate, the proposal produced consternation rather than joy and
satisfaction in the circle of the bride-elect. Possibly Amasis held
with special tenderness the daughter in question. Be this as it may,
he sent not the princess demanded, but one who was probably considered
of inferior dignity. Doubtless she went adorned in regal splendor that
the deception might not be suspected. Her finger tips would have been
tinged with henna to look like branches of coral; she would perhaps
wear the Persian head dress, composed of a light golden chain work set
with small pearls, with a thin gold plate pendant about the size of a
crown piece on which was impressed an Arabian prayer and which hung
upon the cheek below the ear. The kohl’s jetty dye would give that
“long, dark, languish to the eye.” A small coronet of jewels would be
placed upon her head and over all a rosy veil. The veils the Eastern
women wore over the head were coquettishly managed to add to their
attractions. Says the poet in “Lalla Rooke”:
“Veiled by such a mask as shades
The features of young Arab maids,
A mask that leaves but one eye free
To do its best in witchery.”
The Arab women wear black masks prettily disposed, and Niebuhr mentions
their showing but one eye in conversation, and again says Moore:
“And bright the glancing looks they hide
Beneath their litters roseate veils.”
So Nitetis, hardly a happy bride, was wedded to the Persian king, and
“nightingales warbled their enchanting notes and rent the thin veils
of the rosebud and the rose,” according to a favorite image of the
Oriental poets. But not joy, peace and happiness resulted—rather wars
and bloodshed. Perhaps in innocence, perhaps in malice, the new queen
revealed the secret of her identity to the king. Since he did not put
her to death we may believe that she herself had some attractions for
him, but the deception he would not forgive and seized upon it, only
too gladly, as a pretext for invading Egypt.
Across the desert which protected Egypt on the northeast marched
Cambyses and his army, while his fleet, supplied by the Phoenician
cities and the Greeks of Asia Minor, blockaded the Egyptian king
(Psammetic III, only recently come to the throne) in Memphis. The
herald was sent in a Greek vessel to demand surrender. The Egyptians,
with mad and cruel folly, courting their own destruction, since such
an act would be sure to infuriate the invader, seized the ship and
tore the crew to pieces. If not before, from that moment their doom
was sealed. Cambyses took Memphis, B. C. 525, on the pyramid plain,
where later Napoleon bade his soldiers do their best, for the Centuries
looked down upon them. It is said that Cambyses put cats and other
sacred animals before his troops so that the Egyptians were afraid
to attack. Be this as it may, the Persians obtained the mastery, and
Cambyses took his revenge on Amasis for the affront offered him by
causing his dead body to be burned.
One cannot help thinking of the homely phrase, “Give a dog a bad name,”
in connection with this ancient king, all the ruin that occurred for
hundreds of years seems set down to the credit of Cambyses, who, with
the most evil intent in the world, could hardly have accomplished all
that was claimed for him. He is said to have left nothing unburnt in
Thebes that fire would consume. “An earthquake and Cambyses,” says
Curtis, “divide the shame of the partial destruction of Memnon.” An
old inscription at the base of the statue reads: “I write after having
heard Memnon. Cambyses has wounded me, a stone cut into the image of
the sun king. I had once the sweet voice of Memnon, but Cambyses has
deprived me of the accents which express joy and grief.”
Tradition also says that Cambyses threw down the magnificent statues
set up to adorn the temple of victory, built by Seti I at old Quernah,
yet Pliny has preserved a story that the same king was so struck by
the beauty of a certain statue that he ordered the flames which he had
kindled extinguished at its base.
It is probable that all his other crimes paled into insignificance in
the eyes of the Egyptians before his murder of their sacred bull. For
this his memory would have been execrated forever had it been his only
deed of violence. But whereas the Persians spoke of Cyrus as “Father”
they called Cambyses “Despot” or “Master”; ferocity and cruelty seemed
to distinguish most of his actions.
Both the hawk and the bull appeared as emblems of royalty and divinity
among the Egyptians from the earliest times. But the bull was also
highly regarded in Assyria, India and among other ancient nations.
The hawk was sacred to the sun, the Apis bull, the living image of
Osiris, the incarnation of a source of life and creative energy. Upon
this animal, so revered and worshipped, Cambyses dared to lay what was
deemed a sacrilegious hand; in the eyes of his new subjects he could
have committed no greater crime. Says one writer: “At Memphis the Apis
bull was bred, nurtured and honored with all the devotion that Asiatic
superstition lavished upon the representative of their miscalled
deities.”
It was said of the god Apis that “his glory was sought for in all
Egypt,” and an inscription reads: “He was found after some months in
the city of Ho-shed-abot. He was solemnly introduced into the temple
of Ptah, beside his father, the Memphian god Phthah of the South
Wall by the high priest in the temple of Phthah, the great prince of
the Mashuash Petise, the son of the high priest of Memphis and great
prince of the Mashuash, Takelut and of the princess of royal race,
Thes-bast-per.”
The priests would search through the land for the new Apis, which must
have certain marks upon it. The rules required that the young bull
should be black, with a white triangle on his forehead, the likeness
of a vulture on his back, a crescent moon on his side, two kinds of
hair in his tail and an excrescence under his tongue like the sacred
beetle. Naturally it took a long time to find just such an animal, and
the time between the death of one and the finding of another was kept
as a period of fasting and mourning. It is said that when the old Apis
outlived twenty-five years he was quietly drowned by the priests, and
the bodies of the dead bulls were embalmed and buried with royal honors
in tombs in the desert. When the new bull was found it was a period of
great rejoicing. The mother and calf were brought to the temple and
housed with all honor and regard. The bull was consulted as an oracle
by offering it food, and the omen was favorable or the reverse, as it
accepted or refused it. This doubtless gave opportunity to the priests
and care-takers to direct the matter as they saw fit. A hungry bull
would be much more apt to give a favorable response, as one may well
perceive than an already satiated one.
Memphis, the “City of the White Wall” which was to the Greeks as Cairo
is to us now, the typical Oriental city, was especially celebrated for
its worship of Apis or Hapi and was selected for its residence because
one of the limbs of Osiris, killed by Typhon, the evil spirit, were
found there. One pauses to wonder at the curious mingling of power
and powerlessness which the ancients attributed to their gods. Proof
against all dangers and performing miracles of all sorts they yet at
times, even the very greatest of them, suffered and “died like men.”
Thus the sacred bull, selected by certain particular marks and
guarded and cared for with special reverence, was looked upon as the
incarnation of the god. It is in the Serapium (or bulls’ burying
place), a word regarded as a contraction of Osiris-Apis, that various
tablets and inscriptions were found which give the chief dates and
information which we possess as regards the reigns of certain kings.
The records of the Apis bulls are more complete than the Mnevis bulls,
and he is spoken of as “a fair and beautiful image of the soul of
Osiris.”
It was upon this adored treasure that Cambyses cruelly and unwisely
vented his evil temper. After the conquest of Egypt he again engaged
in other aggressive wars and, returning unsuccessful from one of
his expeditions against Nubia and even more morose and ill-natured
than usual, he found the people celebrating one of their religious
festivals, and, thinking, or pretending to think, that they were
deriding him and rejoicing at his ill-success, he poured out the viols
of his wrath. “Oh stupid mortals!” he exclaimed. “Are these your gods?
Creatures of flesh and blood and sensible to the touch of steel!” and
he caused the sacred bull to be brought forth and stabbed it in the
thigh and put several of the priests to death.
One of the most interesting events of modern times was the discovery
by Mariette of the long lost Serapeum in 1850. The temple had been
described by Strabo, but the lapse of years and the drifting sands of
the desert had obliterated it from memory and hidden it from sight.
Wandering in the neighborhood of the Step Pyramid of Sakkarah, the
oldest in the world, believed to have been erected only eighty years
after the time of Menes, this noted archaeologist stumbled against an
object which proved to be the head of a sphinx, and immediately the
description of Strabo came into his mind. At once, with characteristic
patience and determination, he set his men to work and had the immense
satisfaction after innumerable difficulties of discovering the avenue
of sphinxes which led to the Serapeum and the buried temple itself. It
extended 640 feet into the solid rock, with long galleries, sixty-four
vaulted chambers on either side and a vaulted roof twenty feet high,
while the breadth of the gallery was about the same. In one chamber he
discovered the Apis, who died in the sixtieth year of Rameses II, so
fresh and undisturbed did this seem that the finger marks could be seen
on the walls and footprints in the sand. A human mummy, which Mariette
at first took to be an Apis, was also discovered, and proved by the
inscription to be that of the favorite son of Rameses II Kha-em-uas,
high priest of the temple of Ptah and governor of Memphis. The body
was covered with jewels, gold chains and amulets, precious and gold
washed, all of which are now in the Louvre. Huge granite sarcophagi
were discovered in twenty-four cells, bearing the name of the king on
the throne at the time the Apis was buried. The most recent mummies
discovered were from the time of Psammetichus II of the Twenty-sixth
Dynasty, 660 B. C., to a Ptolemy Dynasty 500 years later.
At certain periods the votaries of Serapis celebrated festivals in
the temple and recorded them on votive tablets, which were found in
the galleries of the Serapeum. From these we gather that the reign of
Psammetichus was brief; that there were six kings of the Twenty-sixth
Dynasty, 666 B. C.; that following Psammetichus I came Necho II, in
the sixteenth year of whose reign an Apis was born. That another was
installed in the temple of Ptah in the first year of the reign of
Psamettic II; that an Apis died in the twelfth year of Apries, and that
this king was succeeded by Amasis and Psammetic III.
Unable to carry away all of his finds to place them in greater security
in various museums, Mariette buried some of them temporarily near the
spot, which Miss Edwards says was betrayed and sold by the Arabs to a
certain Austrian arch-duke, who took possession and carried them to
Trieste. Among them was said to be the bull stabbed by Cambyses, while
in the rooms of the New York Historical Society the same, or very
similar, mummy of an Apis is to be seen. Whether the wound of the bull
proved fatal and he was secretly buried by the priests, or whether
he survived till the fourth year of Darius’ reign, as the Serapeum
tablets seem to indicate, is a mooted point. Ne-chatano, a subsequent
and native Egyptian king, is believed to have rebuilt or restored the
Serapeum in 350 B. C. One tablet in the collection records the death of
an Apis in the sixth year of Cambyses.
But the reign of this cruel king at last came to an end. A revolt took
place in Persia, the murdered Smerdis was represented by an imposter,
who for some time deceived the people, and Cambyses, hastening home,
either died or, some say, committed suicide by stabbing himself with
his dagger, so runs the legend, while mounting a horse in the same
place as he had wounded the bull. It was the custom of the Egyptian
women to go two days in the week to the tombs of their dead and to
throw upon them a sweet smelling herb, like basil, but for Cambyses
we can imagine no such mourning was made. The world was well rid of a
monster, and even his wives must have felt that they were freed from
the tyrant. Custom permitted the Persian king to have several legal
wives, but one only was the legal queen. Atossa probably occupied
this position. Her experiences in husbands were varied and her charms
probably great.
Magus, by others called Gomates, personated the dead Smerdis or Bardiya
and took Cambyses’ wives, but kept them in separate establishments
that his secret might not be discovered. The story goes that for some
previous crime the ears of the impostor had been cut off, but that he
covered the place with his hair. In his sleep, however, one of his
wives, the daughter of Otanes, suspecting his impersonation, passed her
hand over his head, and thus his fraud was made public. In the end he
was slain by Darius, a member of the royal family, who now laid claim
to the throne and proved to be an excellent sovereign.
He again took Queen Atossa to wife, and her influence over him is
said to have been unbounded, and she became the mother of Xerxes,
who succeeded him. She survived Salamis and was actually, in part,
contemporary with Herodotus, from whom we derive the information
regarding her so numerous marriages. Cyrus had one legal wife, Cambyses
three and Darius five.
His wives are given as first a daughter of Gobryas, whose children were
Artabazanes, and two others—Atossa, by whom he had Xerxes; Hystaspes,
Akhaemenes and Masistes; Arystone, by whom he had Arsames and Gobryas;
Parmys, by whom he had Ariomardas, and, lastly, Phrataguma, by whom he
had Abrocome and Hyperanthe.
Darius seems to have been the one Persian king beloved by the
Egyptians, towards whom he showed himself in great contrast to his
predecessor, most considerate and regardful, associating with the
priests and studying their theology. During his lifetime he was called
a god by the Egyptians and he is the only Persian king whose name is
accompanied with a titular shield and whose phonetic shield bears the
crest of the vulpauser and disk ‘son of the sun.’ The only one whose
phonetic name is accompanied by a pre-nomen, like those of the ancient
kings. He obtained while living the title of “Divus” and received,
after death, the same honors as the native Egyptian sovereigns, of
the earlier centuries. On an ornament of porcelain in the museum at
Florence he is called “beneficent god.” He is even represented in
sculpture as worshipping the Egyptian god Athor, and the mummy of
Osiris, with the lighted lamp, the emblem of fire (the great divinity
of Persia) in each hand. But in spite of this another authority states
that no Persian king’s name is found on a public monument in Egypt.